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Monthly Archives: May 2013

I think most of you know that I had a hip replacement a couple of weeks ago. It was not easy, it was very hard, and very painful the first week. I had some complications with a high heart rate, and my blood sugar went thru the roof after surgery. Then I had to have a blood transfusion. I remember not being able to hold my own head up. But after 5 days they sent me to rehab in another building on campus.

I only had one issue at rehab with my leg. One day I spent a lot of time in the wheelchair working at my laptop, plus 3 therapies where I really pushed myself. By the afternoon my leg felt really tight, and I looked down and discovered my leg was all swelled up and the incision had burst open and leaking blood etc. (Ick, sorry). I was really shocked because for over a week it had been dry and healing nicely. So, the nurses and doctors came for a look-see and started antibiotics and regular dressing changes. I was to keep my leg up as much as possible, no more dangling.

They let me go home after a week there, with prescriptions and home health care with nurses and PT’s. The leg kept bleeding tho. And Tuesday I had an idiot PT guy that really hurt me, and so now my hamstring, groin, thigh, everything hurts really bad, including my back. I could just kill him. I’m very very upset about it, because for the past year I have dealt with this pain, and it was almost all gone, and now it is all bad again. Last night trying to find a position to sleep in with ice bags all over my lower body, I was really cussing up a storm.

By the time I went to the doctor yesterday for my follow-up, it was apparently bad enough for him to schedule surgery, for tomorrow. If the infection reaches my prothesis, it will have to be removed. Unbelievable.

The new hip itself is doing really good. They took xrays and it matches in beautifully with my other hip. As my 4 year old great niece would say, “Aunt Janet, your new leg is adorable!”

So…..my rehab progress has been slow, a few bumps in the road, but overall I am doing great. Lake Forest hospital and Rehab was EXCELLENT. This whole process has been very emotional, both mentally and physically. Not to mention painful. However, I am so proud of myself for working through the pain. I was up and walking on my own within a week, doing stairs etc.

Thank you everyone, for all the prayers and good wishes. I firmly believe it helps. So I will put myself in God’s hands one more time tomorrow, and he will heal me.

P.S. Please pray that when I can walk again I don’t hunt down that therapist and twist him into a pretzel and enjoy his cries of pain.

One of the bloggers I follow who is VERY POPULAR did something a few months back that caused me to stop believing he was infallible and that is all about the numbers.

He is kinda of controversial in my opinion. Like I said, he is VERY POPULAR and blogging is his full-time job now, so perhaps he is controversial-on-purpose. I will give just an example of what bugs me so much about this blogger.

He has a child and is divorced and lives in an apartment. One day he and his child were carrying a table out to the dumpster and ran across a girl with a dog pulling on a leash that appeared to be ferocious and attacking them. The blogger dropped the table, roared a few inappropriate words, and then proceeded to drop kick the dog across the parking lot. The dog hobbled away crying, obviously injured, and the girl started to cry. Apparently she has Aspergers. Anyway, they ran away. The blogger never mentioned what kind of dog it was.

I forget the exact sequence but the people lived upstairs from him, and the girl was trying to help out, because the mother had cancer and the father was overwhelmed and they were very poor. So blogger man decided this was the perfect opportunity to crank out the popularity machine. He wrote a blog about the incident, and right away people were all about your poor kid, vicious dog, you did right, the dog would have killed him, I would have killed that dog etc. etc. Then there were the dissenters, like me, that thought perhaps he wasn’t teaching his child the right lesson by abusing a dog in that manner, using inappropriate language and scaring the life out of a poor little girl. There were just enough dissenters to make it a little uncomfortable for the hero blogger who “saved his kids life”.

So then of course he apologizes somewhat and decides to do the humane thing, and takes up a collection for the poor folks upstairs. He posted the letter he wrote them, and while I applaud him for raising thousands of dollars, he let it slip that he had actually made a claim against their insurance company for his $100 jeans and the medical bills for the dog bite (one puncture wound). It was right there, in black and white, on the letter he posted in his blog.

I could not believe his audacity, that he sued these poor people for something so minor. I’m sure as a result that they put the dog down and raised his insurance rates. Of course the blogger never mentioned any of the aftermath of his actions. Oh, and the mother died during all this turmoil for this poor family. I’m sure the money really helped the girl deal with it.

But….THOUSANDS of people commented on his blog, and sent in donations. I was not one of them. I made a comment about the poor dog, and hundreds of people turned against me. It was almost like a mob mentality. It was like NOBODY even saw the part where he sued them, they just saw this popular blogger doing yet another good thing.

All this left a very poor taste in my mouth. Big bad blogger. In fact, in some of the photos on his website, he puts on his mean face, and let me tell you, it is NOT pretty. He might think it is funny, but not to me. I think this is his true face, most of the time.

If any of you recognize or follow this blogger, and don’t agree with me, good. I could use some “controversy popularity”.

This past week I have been going through a very painful hospital ordeal. One week ago, last Tuesday, I had my entire right hip replaced.

While I was prepared for the physical pain and suffering, I was not prepared to encounter mean girls in such a professional setting for care in a hospital.

After my surgery I was pretty helpless and relied heavily on the nurses and the techs. Those that attended me were WONDERFUL. They helped me eat, sleep, go to the potty, and deal with the pain.

There was one young girl in particular who took a special interest in my case. At first I thought she was a patient care tech, but she quickly informed me she was NOT and didn’t want to be. She was a Professional something that worked at the desk fielding paient calls and sending out the appropriate person to deal with the request. She also helped out with overflow when it got busy.

There were 9 total joint replacement last week on the floor, and so it was very busy. I noticed that the girl, who I will call NAT (Not A Tech) was taking care of me a lot. She worked a lot at night, and so would stay and chat for awhile. She was very nice and friendly, and I enjoyed our visits. She was married and going to school and working lots of hours, and I could relate to all that back at her age.

But then I noticed a subtle change. She seemed to be getting proprietary about me. I noticed that she was also first to respond to my call button, and if someone else was in my room she would say she would take over. I didn’t really care one way or another, you become very close with your caregivers, because you are reduced to a position of relying upon them heavily.

The night before I transferred out one of the patient care tech’s said I got her into trouble by not pressing my call button to get up to go to the potty. I asked who and she said her supervisor. I wondered who her supervisor was, but didn’t ask at the time.

The next day NAT shooed my family out of the room when I called to go to the potty, which I thought was unneccessary, and she spent a longer time than needed with me. She told me that I had too much family, and phone calls etc. At that moment the phone rang, and I said don’t bother with it, they’ll call back. But she seemed to be really irritated by it. It started ringing again, and she marched over to the phone, picked it up, and said, “She cannot come to the phone right now” and hung up.

Hmmmm, I thought. Now it was getting interesting. It was like she was fighting over me, like I was the prized possession on the floor, and she was going to be my BFF, overnight. I was starting to feel like the protagonist in Single White Female, and she was starting to become a bit stalkerish.

But I was moving to a different building for rehab, and didn’t let it bother me. Until I was “checking out”. NAT and anothe girl packed up my possessions and flowers etc on a cart, and settled me in a wheelchair. We were going to take the tunnel to the new building. The other girl went ahead with my stuff, and NAT took me in the wheelchair.

We had to stop at the front desk first, and she went to sit at the desk and then announced to two other girls there, “this is my Jan!” and I noticed how they were sitting in the background smirking and laughing behind their computer screen. I immediately realized that they laughing at NAT, and me by default, even though they knew absolutely nothing about me. It made me sad, and mad. Mad. Don’t ever start smirking at me, it really riles me up.

So as NAT was coming back around with the paperwork, all flushed with either joy that her “friends” got to see “her Jan”, or with embarrassment at being laughed at, I took the bull by the horn. I would never see these people again, and they would never see me again, but they would indeed remember me, as it occurred to me that NAT was their supervisor,

I spoke up, and said, “Ladies, what are you smirking at back there? Are you surfing porn on the internet? Haha. Boy, no wonder NAT has to chip in and help so much! I hope my health insurance dollars are not being used on unprofessional activites!”

And with that, Nat pushed me around the corner, and I waved to the two mean girls and said “Thank you ladies for all your help, I’ll be sure to mention you specifically in the suvery and letter I intend to send about my hospital experience.”

So A&F doesn’t want my business. Well guess what. I don’t want their clothing. Overpriced elitist clothing. Only for the “cool kids”. Propagated by a man who certainly is not now nor ever was a cool kid. Their website pitches them as having a history in great outdoors & East Coast Ivy League.

Mr. Michael Jeffries, their pompous CEO, was born on the WEST coast, did not attend an Ivy League school. He IS married but has a male live-in partner. He has a lot of “requirements” for his jet crew and household staff. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during one of flights!

He also holds the distinct honor of being highest paid worst performer of 2008. Apparently that helped him garner an even more lavish contract. SMH.

Luckily I don’t have kids, because no way in hell would they be wearing anything A&F. Mr. Jeffries reminds me of the school yard bully, who forces other kids into submission in order to build up his own weak ego.

Mr. Jeffries can kiss my fat ass with his puffed up lips and botoxed face. At least my physical appearance can be changed naturally. His kind can’t.